"The microservice architecture is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services, which implement business capabilities. The microservice architecture enables the continuous delivery/deployment of large, complex applications. It also enables an organisation to evolve its technology stack."

"As they evolved, illustrated figures in architecture (sometimes called ‘scalies’) have grown to have more personality, color and life, serving as more than a means to measure relative distances, heights and widths in renderings."

"Le Corbusier was a painter, writer, architect and planner, but he was also an adept promoter of novel designs and theories. So when he debuted his Maison Dom-Ino concept home, it boasted a light and elegant form, but was also cleverly named — its title referenced the look and modularity of gaming “dominoes” (with dots extruded to form columns) as well as “domus,” the Latin word for house."

"Popular platform-as-a-service provider Heroku […] maintains a manifesto of sorts called The Twelve-Factor App. It outlines a methodology for developers to follow when building modern web-based applications. Despite being partly self-serving (apps built like this will translate more naturally to running on Heroku), there’s a lot of meaty best-practices worth examining"

Good design is in the details, as they say, and great architectural design details are often site-specific, responding to local contexts and regional conditions. In places like the Pacific Northwest where rain is a defining factor of everyday life, designing for drainage is naturally essential but it also represents an opportunity to get creative. And one way to do that is with a kind of drain pipe alternative called a “rain chain.”

"This is a general design guide for networked APIs. It has been used inside Google since 2014 and is the guide we follow when designing Cloud APIs and other Google APIs. It is shared here to inform outside developers and to make it easier for us all to work together."

When we skimp on research, our work suffers. With that in mind, there's a lot we can learn from architects, who are forced to do research before beginning a new building. This week, author and former architect Ling Lim illustrates how we can improve our projects by thinking like architects.

How does your database store data on disk reliably? It uses a log.
How does one database replica synchronise with another replica? It uses a log. How does a distributed algorithm like Raft achieve consensus? It uses a log. How does activity data get recorded in a system like Apache Kafka? It uses a log. How will the data infrastructure of your application remain robust at scale? Guess what…

We believe that a coherent approach to systems architecture is needed, and we believe that all necessary aspects are already recognised individually: we want systems that are Responsive, Resilient, Elastic and Message Driven. We call these Reactive Systems.

"A group of Germans, led by architect Jakob Tigges, have decided that Berlin already has an artificial mountain. Built on the site of the former Tempelhof Airport, "The Berg" towers 1,071 meters above the surrounding landscape, edging out the Burj Khalifa as the tallest manmade structure on Earth. It has a website, a Facebook group, photos, testimonials, and tourism information.

Now, nobody can see this mountain. But supporters insist that it's there."

"Invisible Themepark deals with all manner of secret infrastructure, fake places, imagined and illusory environments, secret doors, room, passages, and just about anything else that even remotely fits into these categories."

"Want to know if your ‘HTML application’ is part of the web? Link me into it. Not just link me to it; link me into it. Not just to the black-box frontpage. Link me to a piece of content. Show me that it can be crawled, show me that we can draw strands of silk between the resources presented in your app. That is the web" - Ben Ward

A new commercial building in Tokyo where the facade is a giant QR code: "If a QR Code is static, what could we do with a dynamic device like the iPhone? Our proposed vision of the future is one where the facade of the building disappears, showing those inside who want to be seen. As you press on the characters their comments made on online appear in speech bubbles. You can also browse shop information, make reservations and download coupons. Rather than broadly tagging, we display information specific to the building in a manner in which the virtual (iPhone) serves to enhance the physical (N Building)"

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and more.